Wednesday, October 10, 2007

VISION VANCOUVER SUPPORTS MEDIATOR RECOMMENDATIONS

The opposition group at City Hall, Vision Vancouver, through one of its Councillors, George Chow has announced they will be voting in favour of mediator Brian Foley's recommendations regarding the current City of Vancouver strike. This even though two of the three striking locals rejected Mr. Foley's recommendations.

Council will vote in-camera on Wednesday, October, 10 and the position taken by Vision must be raising alarm bells for CUPE leaders.Councillor Chow announced to CKNW, perhaps prematurely, that Vision Councillorsindividually reviewed over the weekend Mediator Foley's recommendations andthen met and collectively made a decision to support the recommendations.The Vision support of the Foley recommendation around the gender pay equity issue means they don't appear to support pay equity in the workplace and is a slap-in- the-face to Library workers who are primarily female and fighting tooth and nail to achieve this gender fairness right. Moreover, this position of Vision must be quite alarming for the other opposition party, COPE, who have had a longstanding policy of supporting pay equity. How the position taken by Vision will endear them to COPE in negotiations between these two municipal parties as they struggle to come together in an electoral coalition for the 2008 municipal campaign should prove quite interesting.

And let there be no mistake around the Foley recommendation surrounding pay equity.

The bargaining committee of CUPE 391-Library workers, said the recommendations fell far short of achieving pay equity. How Vision will now respond should be interesting.